Aleramo’s dream

He rode non-stop for three days and three nights, from the forests full of disquieting shadows and the treacherouss wamps along the banks of the Po, through the hills of a strong but very sweetland grazed by the warm air coming from the nearbysea. He wearied three horses in his race against time, because all the lands where Aleramo would be able to leave a mark of his presence would be owned and controlled by him. This was the decision taken by Emperor Otto I in the spring of 967 in Ravenna, where he was camping with his army after having defeated the rebellion in Brescia, thanks to the courage and value of Aleramo who was awarded the title of marquis.
Awakened from a long, dreamless sleep, Aleramo ends his secular lethargy with the memory of a dangerous fall from a horse. Among thousands of wonders and fears, he is now shocked by the presence of mobile phones, computers, televisions, cars, airplanes, men and women dressed in strange ways that bustle and speak a sweet but incomprehensible language. He finds out he is no longer living in 967, but in 2015. The silence and the green hills of Monferrato, dominated by medieval castles, are familiar to him. The harsh and gentle land which resulted from Aleramo’sfeat, “that multitude of castles and vineyards, Aleramo’s land,” as Carducci defined it, the territory that wedges from the waters of the Po between the Apennines towards Liguria,dissolving in the plain of Alessandria and towards the Langhe hills is now a World Heritage Site, the 50th Italian site.